Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, the pump on the swamp cooler stopped pumping water into the pads that make it work. Due to our hard water, replacing the pump every year or three is something we've become accustomed to doing. Yesterday afternoon, Lisa undertook the repairs.

( Pump Doesn't Pump )

Lisa opened up the swamp cooler and replaced the old pump with the new one. While the impeller now worked, no water went though the system. Further investigation led her to remove the top of the cooler so she could get at the screw that held a T-shaped distribution pipe. The pump sends the water up to the T-shaped pipe, which sends the water to the pads on the back and sides of the cooler. When she removed the pipe, she found that it was completely clogged. Fortunately, the build-up hadn't hardened, and she was able to get it out by forcing water the "wrong way," blowing air into the pipe, and poking at the clock with a probe.

There was also a lot of crud in the bottom of the cooler. Lisa and I carried the cooler outside and she washed all of the crud out. While we were doing this, we kept hearing a periodic thumping noise coming from the minivan, which was a few meters away. Investigating, we discovered that one of the power door lock switches was stuck in the "unlock" position, meaning that it would periodically try to unlock the doors. Poking at the switch got it unstuck, and I'm glad of that, because not only was it unlocking the doors, but it would have eventually run down the battery.

We carried the cooler back inside, Lisa reassembled everything, I brought in buckets of water to refill the tank, and she turned it on: Success! The cooler started pumping water as it should, and soon thereafter, we started getting cool air wafting through the living room.

I thanked Lisa for doing this. She's much more handy with these sorts of home repairs than I am. I can carry things, buy parts, and so forth, but knowing what to do is more up her alley.

Today was Lisa's birthday. This evening, we drove to Reno and had dinner at the Manhattan Deli at the Atlantis Hotel-Casino, at which some of you may have eaten during the Reno Worldcon. I had half of a pastrami sandwich and a cup of matzo ball soup, while Lisa just had the matzo ball soup. It's been a long time since we both ate here together. Neither of us had enough of an appetite to have a slice of their real New York cheesecake, even if we split it between us.

We got Lisa a sling to help keep her left shoulder (the one whose rotator cuff she tore) immobilized when possible.

( Kuma Bear Misunderstood )

I don't think Lisa is going to try and explain it to him.

Renown Health called Lisa and me this afternoon with the results of the MRI. Unsurprisingly, the diagnosis is a partially torn rotator cuff. They will be referring Lisa to physical therapy, and we should know more tomorrow. This could take a long time (months, likely) to recover. On the good side, it does not look sufficiently bad to require surgery.

We originally meant to do a bunch of errands in Reno yesterday, but the forecast was for snow, so we held off for a day. There was no snow either yesterday or today (except up in the mountains), so we took a shot at getting things done today.

We did most of the errands we planned to do, including getting a small Christmas tree. It was pretty time-consuming, through, as a whole lot of other people also were out there. In the end, we skipping the largest grocery shopping stop and went home, because we were both worn out. So the errand list ended up being: Drop off recycling; try to go to Cost Plus World Market but balk because the queue was much too long; Whole Foods Market to return bottles and buy a couple of things; Stop at Best Buy to buy Lisa's Christmas present (a large SSD drive); Get a tree from Home Depot because I forgot we planned to go to Moana Nursery and we didn't want to back-track; Stop at Work World and get a couple of pairs of slacks for me (hooray, I've dropped down one size); Raley's for some groceries we can't get at WinCo; then go home instead of going to WinCo.

We'll have to make at least one more trip to Reno between now and Christmas, in order to do major grocery shopping and buy a ham for the holiday.

Lisa is still having some difficulty getting around, as she also injured her shoulder during the fun and games installing that door. We'll see if it's serious enough to take her to Urgent Care and get her shoulder X-rayed.

The Worldcon Heritage Organization (WHO) is a nonprofit organization that collects and preserves artifacts relating to the World Science Fiction Convention. At SMOFCon 41, Mary Morman conducted a raffle for the benefit of WHO, the prize from which was a quilt made out of t-shirts from past SMOFCons. I bought some tickets, as did many other people.

On Sunday, the winning ticket was drawn, and Scott Sanford, Lisa's good friend to whom Lisa had given her membership when she decided she was not up to traveling this December, won the quilt. But the story does not end there.

( Quilt to a Good Home )

When I got home tonight and unpacked, I brought the quilt out to Lisa. (I hadn't told her that Scott had given it to us.) She often sleeps in her travel trailer because she keeps such different hours than I do. It's been cold a lot lately, and while there's a propane furnace in the trailer, she's happy to have another quilt on the bed for cold winter nights.

I couldn't include this video yesterday because my phone was stubborn about uploading the video that I shot at the Reno station, but here is Amtrak #5 arriving Reno with Lisa on board. What I didn't realize was that Lisa was in the third car behind the baggage car, so my back was turned to her when she got off the train.



She came up behind me and I was so startled that I stopped recording rather than turning around to record her arrival. My original plan had been to record up until she got off the train. Oh, well.

As of when I'm composing this message, Amtrak 5, the westbound California Zephyr that Lisa boarded on Tuesday afternoon, departed about 30 minutes late out of Grand Junction, Colorado, but Amtrak's system projects that they will make up some of that time by Salt Lake City. If the train is on time, it should pass Fernley tomorrow morning around 8 AM, about the time that my daily staff meeting conference call ends. I will be keeping track of the train and hope to be outside waving as it goes by, after which I'll hop in the van and drive to Reno to collect Lisa.

(That is of course unless the train gets stopped in Fernley unexpectedly for a while and they decide to let Lisa off the train across the street from our house. Such stoppages are very rare, though.)

Today is Lisa's final full day in Chicago. She's still very tired and very much wanting to be home. Today she double-checked the route from the hotel to Union Station (there's apparently a lot of road construction in the area). The people with the crying baby and the screaming kids appear to have left, so she was able to get some sleep.

The train from Chicago to Reno leaves Chicago at 2 PM. Lisa thus can check out at her leisure tomorrow morning and head to Union Station, where she can hang out in the comfortable and spacious Metropolitan Lounge until it's time to board. After that, she should be able to relax as it will be only a couple more days before she is home.

Just before 06:00 my time, Chris Carson called me from his room in the hotel in Chicago (a few doors down from Lisa's room). He filled me in on his side of yesterday's madness. He'd not been able to get into the hotel internet either, and he told me that the hotel hoped to have that fixed today.

I got up and dressed, and as I was considering going to the Wigwam to have breakfast just as they opened, Lisa called. Despite the grueling schedule from yesterday and her exhaustion, she got very little sleep, as the hotel's heating system (radiators) was clicking and pinging all night long, and it kept waking her up. She told me she couldn't tolerate this because she'd never be able to sleep. So it was time for Travel Agent Kevin to go to work.

First I called Amtrak. As I feared, there were no roomettes available on any trains until Tuesday, which is the day she's leaving anyway. The agent did tell me that even if rooms became available, Amtrak's website is useless for making that sort of change, so you have to call and talk to a human being to make such a change.

Next I took stock of hotel changes. I have a lot more IHG points than I had at the start of this trip, in part because we ended up not having to use some of them at a very expensive property we originally considered using in Munich for the end of Lisa's stay there. (The H.ome Serviced Apartments managed to suffice until the day she left.) I discovered that I had almost exactly enough points to buy three nights at the Holiday Inn south of Union Station. Lisa and I stayed there once, many years ago, and had the odd experience (due to it being the last room available and my having a confirmed reservation) of staying in their "conference room" hotel room: a room that is mostly a small board room, but that also has a sleeping room attached to it. It turned out to be significantly less expensive for me to purchase the small amount of additional points that I needed to book a three-night stay than it would be to book the room on money, even on their "points and cash" offers. So for about $70 worth of purchased points, I booked a room at that Holiday Inn.

The Holiday Inn & Suites Downtown Chicago turns out to be not that far from the hotel in which Lisa was staying: about 1300 m, and it's on the same street. It's also decently convenient for when she leaves on Tuesday. I called the hotel to make sure they would let her check in even though it's my name that booked the room. They confirmed that they had her name on the reservation. They also arranged to use my IHG credit card for any incidental charges. It was still pretty early, so I asked if they had any rooms available into which Lisa could move today. They said they were still cleaning rooms, but if she came there now and did not mind waiting in the lobby, they could give her the next available room.

I then called the first hotel and ended up speaking to the manager, to whom I explained that the pinging radiators were driving my wife mad and she was going to have to leave. The manager agreed to refund the remaining three nights of the reservation. I called Lisa and explained what was going on. She was packing to check out anyway, even if it "stranded" the remainder of the reservation. This revised arrangement was a big improvement. I also called Chris to tell him what was going home and to let him know where Lisa would be.

It's a pity that I hadn't spotted that Holiday Inn when doing the initial booking, because due to a a feature of my IHG credit card, I could have got Lisa a four night stay for the price of three nights' worth of points — what I'm spending anyway now — and saved over $200 in hotel costs from last night's stay. Oh, well, more spilled milk over which crying does no good. Also, I didn't have the points at the start of this trip that I have now, much of which I earned from Glasgow and from some of Lisa's other stays, so I probably wouldn't have considered doing this.

So after more than 90 minutes of being on the phone talking to Amtrak, hotels, Lisa, and Chris, I finally have everything re-sorted, I think. I went to the Wigwam and had a slow, leisurely breakfast. When I got back, I checked with the first hotel, and Lisa had indeed checked out. I'm composing this, I see that the "Welcome Amenity" points from IHG have posted to my account, which means Lisa has made it to the Holiday Inn and checked in. (It's a peculiarity of the IHG system that I get 500 points even when staying there on points.)

I can see why travel agent isn't an easy job.